Opinions and Editorials

Narendra Modi’s re-induction: How to tackle BJP’s incompatibility with the RSS – By T K Arun (Apr 1, 2013, Economic Times)

Ever since the Mad Hatter admonished Alice for confusing ‘saying what she meant’ with ‘meaning what she said’, we have had clarity on the distinction between the two, one whose significance gets reinforced with every passing day in the wonderland of Indian politics. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Uma Bharti and Varun Gandhi, faces of hardline Hindutva, have been elevated to the BJP’s central leadership, while Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar , who represent reform and commitment to governance, fail to find a place in the constellation of 82 announced Sunday. Does this increase the chances of Narendra Modi being made the party’s prime ministerial candidate before the elections? Absolutely not. Does the exit of Shanta Kumar and Vasundhara Raje mean that former chief ministers have lost favour?

But Sadanand Gowda, former chief minister of Karnataka, has been roped in. Nor does Hema Malini’s exit mean any generalised fall in the stock of actresses: Smriti Irani has been elevated. But one thing is clear. Modi’s stock has risen. His former minister of state for home Amit Shah, accused of masterminding the Sohrabuddin Sheikh killing, is now a general secretary of the party, while Modi himself is the only serving chief minister to find a place in the 12 member central parliamentary board. The truth is, the BJP does not declare who its leaders really are, nor are its declared leaders the real men who matter. The BJP was created by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as its political arm and has remained as such. The RSS decides who the party’s president would be and for how long. The RSS chose Nitin Gadkari as party president and then replaced him with Rajnath Singh.

This is not in the party’s constitution but then, so what? If the BJP ends up in a position to form the government after the 2014 elections, the RSS will decide on the prime minister. An individual leader’s popularity does not really cut much ice with the RSS, who sees the BJP and the governments it forms as means to its ultimate goal: upturning liberal democracy with a political order that puts Muslims in their place as second-class citizens. The RSS’ quarrel with Modi is not ideological. Rather, the problem is that Modi is not amenable to control by the Sangh. He has rendered the Sangh toothless in Gujarat, making himself larger than life in the state. Can the Sangh risk such dentistry at the national level as well? But this real reason for silence on a pre-poll PM candidate does not have to be revealed.

A worrying paucity of allies willing to rally under ‘Modi for prime minister’ is sufficient, for the time being. The immediate challenge before the BJP is to salvage Karnataka, the first southern state to elect a BJP government. With the exit of its former strongman Yeddyurappa, the BJP faces a very tough fight there. Party president Rajnath Singh has invited none other than Narendra Modi to lead this crucial battle. Modi, sensibly, has declined this invitation to play a national role, which, by sheer coincidence, of course, also promises to be a suicidal one. But the BJP suddenly sees a ray of hope in Karnataka – Rahul Gandhi. The Congress vice-president, preaching inner party democracy, has autocratically imposed rank outsiders on the Karnataka party.

CM Ibrahim, whose chief service to the nation has been to abort a new airline mooted by the Tatas as civil aviation minister in the United Front government, is Gandhi’s choice for campaign strategist. Of course, no Congressman is mad enough to play Mad Hatter to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. So Congressmen are likely to assert inner party democracy the most effective way they know: ensure the defeat of externally imposed leaders. It is safer to play contrary on the quiet. So, impetuous Sushma Swaraj – she broke into dance at Raj Ghat once – who has turned responsible, of late – she did not demand that 10 Pakistani prisoners be killed in Indian jails in return for the one Indian prisoner who died in Pakistan – could take up the challenge. But the BJP’s real problem is the fundamental incompatibility of the RSS project with democracy. Contrary, after all, is not the same thing as contradictory. How to tackle this contradiction is the real challenge.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/19316001.cms

SEE ALSO:

• To polarise is the goal – By Seema Mustafa (Apr 1, 2013, DNA India)
  http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column_to-polarise-is-the-goal_1817621
• Saffron’s diminishing returns – By Harbans Mukhia (Apr 1, 2013, The Hindu)
  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/saffrons-diminishing-returns/article4567391.ece
• Singh, Sangh and Modi – By By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr (Apr 1, 2013, DNA India)
  http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_singh-sangh-and-modi_1817620
• Muslims against Modi: Can their vote defeat him? – By FP Politics (Apr 1, 2013, First Post)
  http://www.firstpost.com/politics/muslims-against-modi-can-their-vote-defeat-him-680762.html

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From Hermitude To Holography – By Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay (Apr 8, 2013, Outlook)

…I asked him about the boundaries of existence his political clan has enforced on non-Hindus and the need for them to accept Hindu ideas and ideals as their own. Modi replied: “Yes, that was the basic argument (in the course of the Ayodhya agitation, that Muslims also must accept Lord Ram as the symbol of national identity), the main philosophy – that he also was a mahapurush (great man) of this country. And that everyone in this country should believe in this – those who led this agitation campaigned for this.” At this point of the interview, it becomes evident that Modi strongly believes that if minorities wished to coexist and feel safe in the state governed by him, it was mandatory for them to abide by the beliefs and value systems of the majority community. Meanwhile, I prodded on as Modi was opening up, and this was my best chance to get to the core of Modi’s understanding of Hindutva and I asked him: “India has a composite culture. There is tremendous social diversity. How do you look at inter-community relationships and the relationship of different social and religious groups with the State?” Modi did not answer my question explicitly but said: “People can have different forms of puja and rituals can also be different – but that does not mean that the country, the traditions of the land can become different. …

Modi’s first hurdle after he became chief minister in 2001 was to find a safe seat and become member of the state assembly within the mandatory six-month period. But this was not easy for two reasons: Modi had never contested any election in his political career, and secondly, with the BJP traversing a rough terrain, finding a safe seat was difficult. As we have seen, Modi did not have apolitical home. He had been mostly Ahmedabad-based since joining the RSS in the early 1970s and ideally wanted to contest from a city seat – where he would personally know party workers – vacated by a party colleague. But an easy entry to the state assembly proved difficult for Modi because Haren Pandya, whose seat Modi wanted, did not oblige.

If such provocation was not enough, Pandya courted further trouble in the aftermath of the 2002 riots when he appeared before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Krishna Iyer in May 2002. The deposition was made on an understanding that he would not be named. However, Modi’s intelligence wing, which an unnamed source says was fine-tuned after he became chief minister because Modi had been inspired by “Shivaji’s spy network” and wanted to develop an intelligence web like that, kept track of Pandya’s movements. Even his mobile phone was tapped – media reports claimed – as a result of which Modi got to know about Pandya’s deposition in almost real-time in May 2002.

Modi, however, was not satisfied at easing Pandya out of his government. In assembly elections, held in November-December 2002, the friend-turned-foe was not nominated by the party even after the intervention of stalwarts such as Advani and Vajpayee. The media reported gleefully that in order to avoid being pressurised into nominating Pandya, Modi checked into a hospital and stopped taking phone calls from New Delhi. After this, Pandya receded from the limelight and lived a quiet life till March 26, 2003, when everything was over for him. On that dreadful morning, an unknown assassin’s gun silenced Pandya when he was returning from a morning walk in the sprawling Law Garden, a public park in Ahmedabad.

The Haren Pandya murder case became the first of the several high-profile non-2002-riots court cases in Gujarat that cast a shadow over Modi’s regime. In police parlance, the Pandya murder case was termed a cut-out murder, where the chain from the conspirator or instigator to the eventual victim is impossible to establish. A police contact explained it like this: “A wants to murder Z and instructs B to execute the order. B tells C who does not know that A is the instigator. Instructions are passed in this manner from C to D and then to E and it goes down all the way. The final contract killer does not know where the order originated from. If investigations turns nasty, then all A has to do is to make any of the people in the chain a cut-out – take him out by beginning another chain.”

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?284660

SEE ALSO:

• Hindutva Fascism, Left & Competing Ideas of India – By Archana Prasad (Mar 31, 2013, Peoples Democracy)
  http://pd.cpim.org/2013/0331_pd/03312013_11.html
• Karnataka: BJP bites the dust – By Ravi Sharma (Mar 23, 2013, Frontline)
  http://www.flonnet.com/fl3006/stories/20130405300611800.htm

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The Fight For Muslims Is Fundamental For The Survival Of Our Democracy – By Shoma Chaudhury (Mar 28, 2013, Tehelka)

Some years ago, at a TEHELKA press conference, a young Muslim man walked up to TEHELKA Editor Tarun Tejpal and held his hand in deep gratitude. “If it had not been for your journalists, we would long have picked up the gun. Your work gives us hope, Sir,” he said. “You help us believe we belong to this country.” It was one of those rare moments of vindication journalists live for. The young man’s father, a respected maulvi, was falsely incarcerated then. We had just written his story. He would be acquitted a few years later. In a sense, it is immaterial who that young man was. Over the past few years, TEHELKA journalists have documented hundreds of stories of innocent Muslims languishing in jails – often brutally tortured – on flimsy or false charges. It is easy to blank that phrase out, to be inured to it: “Hundreds of Muslims arrested on false charges”. But each case hides hair-raising stories about prejudice, incompetence and deliberate malafide. Each case also holds stories of pain, destroyed lives and hollowed futures.

Innocent Muslims have been jailed with impunity in India over the past decade because it was easy to jail them. Within hours of any terror attack, a bunch of Muslim boys would be arrested and their names aired in the media as “masterminds”. Then they would disappear from mainstream consciousness. Their guilt was assumed: it did not need to be proved. Since 2001, a terrible maxim had seeped into the Indian mainstream: All Muslims may not be terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. It did not matter if you caught the wrong ones. No one needed veracity. Everyone only wanted the illusion of security and “action taken”.

It wasn’t easy to report on these stories and ask the hard questions. The few human rights and media groups who did, were scorned as “anti-national”. Or doctrinaire liberals. The key point was missed. It is no one’s position that those who plant bombs should go unpunished. Those, like us, who were raising flags had only two simple arguments to make. One, take the long route, catch the real culprits, remain constitutional: that is the only way to real security. Two: do not make false arrests and breed fresh despair, triggering new cycles of hate and revenge. In the clever calculations men make about security and State, they underestimate the power of human despair. When you lose faith that a system will play fair by you, it can breed fatal recklessness. It can make you abdicate from the rules that cement human relations. Despair can turn you from citizen to perpetrator. From the hunted to the hunter. Despair can be a deadly weapon.

Fortunately – even if slowly – this dangerous tide has begun to turn. The dogged exposés are paying off. Over the past few months, there have been some very significant developments. First, in November last year, nudged by a committed citizens’ group – People’s Campaign against the Politics of Terror – CPM leader Prakash Karat took a list of 22 Muslims to President Pranab Mukherjee and demanded the Centre take immediate steps to help such victims of “State-led injustice”. The demands included fast-track courts; rehabilitation and compensation for those falsely jailed; and a review of the UAPA Act. Most importantly, Karat’s delegation to the President made the idea of ‘justice for Muslims’ front-page news. The sound-proof towers had been breached.

In March this year, in another unprecedented move, in the Rajasthan High Court Infosys agreed to pay a compensation of 20 lakh to Rashid Husain, a young Muslim engineer who’d been questioned by the police and unfairly sacked from his job soon after. Hopefully, this will set a blueprint for all those whose lives and reputations have been similarly destroyed. Young men who’ve spent decades in jail; who cannot find jobs or houses to rent even when they’re acquitted; whose families find themselves ostracised and sisters find themselves unmarriageable because their brothers have been stigmatised. Finally, in a potentially far-reaching move, this week – perhaps driven by cynical electoral concerns – Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde wrote to parliamentarian Mohammed Adeeb that the government was considering setting up fast-track courts to expedite trials of Muslims in terror cases. It is absolutely crucial that this letter of intent does not go into oblivion. The fight for justice for Muslims is not an act of chivalric charity towards minorities: it is a fundamental act of survival for Indian democracy.

http://tehelka.com/the-fight-for-muslims-is-fundamental-for-the-survival-of-democracy/

SEE ALSO:

• Double standards of justice! – By Syed Hassan Kazim (Mar 29, 2013, Twocircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2013mar29/double_standards_justice.html

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Rethinking National Counter Terrorism Centre – By Bhaskar Menon (Apr 1, 2013, Twocircles.net)

Those opposed to an unconstitutional National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) with a dangerous combination of Intelligence and Police powers should propose an alternative: a National Intelligence Centre (NIC) with statutory powers over all other civilian agencies and a Director reporting directly to the Prime Minister. This will result in the entire Intelligence establishment being brought within a constitutional framework and made accountable to Parliament. It will also ensure that reforms necessary for coherence and efficiency will get continuing attention at the highest level. The legislation on the matter should: Provide for reform: Parliament should mandate the NIC to carry out a thorough review and appraisal of existing Intelligence agencies and arrangements and recommend comprehensive changes to improve their coherence and effectiveness. Changes should aim to create dedicated capacities to monitor the full range of strategic developments in economic, social and political sectors within the country and outside, with the NIC integrating information flows and making overall analyses. That broad approach will throw into high relief the motivations and means driving significant trends and point to countries, groups and individuals that merit special attention. This process should also make clear the requirements in terms of personnel, training, technical development and budgeting for the continuous improvement of Intelligence activities. In sum, the reforms will build capacity for pro-active policy and action.

Require public reporting by the NIC: In an open democracy public understanding is critically important to counter domestic anti-national forces and foreign subversion. Parliament must mandate that relevant portions of the analytical work of the NIC be made public in regular and special reports. These must be subject to debate by central and state legislators and in the media. Require cooperation with civil society: No Intelligence agency can be effective without cooperation from members of the public. At present such cooperation is ad hoc, and can depend on anything from a general fear of officialdom to intimidation and blackmail, Parliament should mandate the NIC to create a regular, structured relationship with civil society, especially in gathering information on communal issues. On other matters affecting national security such as corruption in defence procurement and financing of violent groups within the country the NIC should have a mandate to inform and educate the media so that reporters know basic facts and policy parameters and cannot be manipulated by “leaks” from interested parties. The NIC should also work with other statutory bodies such as the National Press Council to call public attention to issues of systemic anti-national bias.

Create an Appeals Mechanism: If Intelligence operatives infringe on the rights, liberties and lives of Indian citizens there should be a mechanism to address problems without public disclosures harmful to national security. Parliament should create an easily accessed and responsive Grievance Mechanism providing for appeals up to a Parliamentary Standing Committee with confidential procedures that could, when necessary, bring matters to the attention of the Prime Minister and President. Use of this mechanism should not preclude legal options for affected parties. Promote understanding of India’s strategic interests: Intelligence agencies can only be effective within a clear strategic framework. Most developed countries, especially those with global interests, have such frameworks but few spell it out. Britain, for instance, has its famous “permanent interests” that are unspecified but boil down to the benefit it can draw from any situation. The United States is unique in publicly defining its overall national strategy as the promotion of democracy globally. That reflects the country’s anti-colonial foundation and its evolution on the basis of a set of inalienable values.

The Indian constitution draws heavily on the American and so the global expansion of democracy is also its fundamental strategic interest; but it is not the only one. Equally important is increased social equity as the country’s diverse communities move ponderously from many different stages of development into a shared economic and political system. So is the maintenance of India’s traditional values at a time when the verities of Western “progress” must be overwritten in the interests of a liveable planet. The strategic picture is further complicated by the existence of many foreign proxies within India, an unavoidable legacy of colonial rule. Under these conditions a primary national imperative is broad public awareness of what is necessary for the country’s continued evolution according to its own best lights. Parliament must make provision for these issues to be debated nationally in a continuing and constructive process that draws in educational and training institutions, including those that shape government officials and Intelligence operatives. With these parameters the NIC can be more than an effective guard against foreign and domestic enemies; it can be a powerful support for India’s vast transition to a new age.

http://twocircles.net/2013apr01/rethinking_national_counter_terrorism_centre.html

SEE ALSO:

• Crime and punishment – Editorial (Mar 25, 2013, The Hindu)
  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/crime-and-punishment/article4544584.ece
• Democracy and Violence – By Badri Narayan (Apr 6, 2013, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://www.epw.in/commentary/democracy-and-violence.html

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Criminalising People’s Protests – By Anand Teltumbde (Apr 6, 2013, Economic & Political Weekly)

Public protests signify that democracy is alive and well. Whatever its form, the essence of democracy is the space it provides for people to voice their protest against the government. However, while India has managed to flaunt for decades that it is the world’s largest functional democracy, it has systematically decimated such space for the masses. Today, this space has been symbolically reduced to small designated pockets in every state capital where aggrieved people can gather and shout to their hearts’ content only so that they can hear themselves. Not much unlike jails, with their barbed wire fences and narrow openings guarded by a thick posse of armed policemen, the authorities do not let public protest infect the people at large. The maximum the people protesting at these places can reach is the police sub-inspector seated there to receive their memorandums. Indian democracy has not, however, been content with this general strangulation of democratic space; it often takes offensive against the protesters by slapping criminal charges on them. Examples are legion but the recent proceedings against Irom Sharmila, the iron lady of Manipur, who was brought to Delhi to face trial for her “crime of attempting suicide” at the Jantar Mantar best highlights this trend.

Sharmila’s protest began with her indefinite fast on 3 November 2000, a day after 10 persons were shot down by the Assam Rifles, one of the Indian paramilitary forces operating in Manipur, while waiting at a bus stop just outside Imphal. The incident later came to be known as the “Malom Massacre”. Within days, Sharmila was taken by the police, and since then, she is being force-fed a liquid concoction of nutrients in a hospital, which serves as her prison. After every year in detention, she is released for a day and rearrested for attempting to commit suicide, because she refuses to call off her fast until the government repeals the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA), which is in force in Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and parts of Arunachal Pradesh besides, Jammu and Kashmir. Now in its 13th year, her protest is the longest hunger strike in recorded history, which has shaken the entire world but failed to sensitise the Indian rulers. On the contrary, they chose to actuate their penal machine and charged her with an “attempt to commit suicide”, which is unlawful under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code.

The AFSPA against which Sharmila reiterated her protest to the metropolitan magistrate, Delhi however continues on the statute. This draconian Act that giving the army the unquestionable powers to shoot to kill, arrest and search or even destroy property on mere suspicion and enacted as a short-term measure to allow the deployment of the army in India’s north-eastern Naga Hills, has been in existence for over five decades. According to a report entitled “Manipur: Memorandum on Extrajudicial Summary or Arbitrary Executions” by the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights in Manipur and the United Nations, altogether 1,528 people, including 31 women and 98 children were killed in fake encounters by the security forces in Manipur alone between 1979 and May 2012. Of these, 419 were killed by the Assam Rifles, while 481 were killed by combined teams of Manipur Police and the central security forces. These are gory statistics but they do not tell the human tragedy that befell entire generations that grew up under the shadow of the gun. It is a usual sight in Manipur to find even school kids sitting in protest against the atrocities by the armed forces.

The government cites the ongoing insurgency in the hilly state to explain its stand against the repeal of AFSPA. According to its argument, nearly 15 militant outfits are active in the state and in the period between 2007 and 2011, over 1,500 people were killed in militancy-related violence, among them were 1,011 militants and 406 civilians. This argument itself should prompt a simple question, if the army, with a free hand, has not been able to control the so-called insurgency over five decades, what is the justification for the Act? It may even be argued that the insurgency, given the government’s own statistics, has increased during the currency of the Act. This is because the excesses committed by the armed forces with impunity alienate people and impel them to take up the gun. If one dispassionately looks at the north-eastern states, comprising about 7% of India’s total area and 3.7% of its population, bigger than many countries but devoid of any notable development, one cannot but get a feel that they are like a colony governed by the armed might of India. The Constitution does provide for emergency clauses but they are meant to be short-lived. The arguments the government and its army establishment proffer for continuing with AFSPA are, interestingly, the same as the arguments advanced when the 1942 ordinance was enacted in order to keep the British Empire intact.

The same logic extends to the protesting people in mainland India. There are scores of draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, the National Security Act, and various provisions in the penal code, like “sedition”, which continue to mock at our claim of being a democracy. Given the increasing divide between the majority of people mired in abominable poverty and powerlessness and a miniscule minority with all the pelf and power, people’s protests are a natural outcome. During the initial decades of post-Independence India, when the ruling classes had not yet consolidated themselves, these protests were responded to by the state with colonial decency. But by the mid-1970s, an oppressive Emergency was declared, and after a spell of political turmoil, the country entered the neo-liberal era that ideologically trashed social protests and legitimated the oppressive social Darwinist ethos of the rulers. The enforcement of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) in 1985 succeeded by the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) in 2002 and thereafter UAPA in 2004 during this era, duly aided by global “security syndrome” unleashed by 9/11, should be seen in that light. …

http://www.epw.in/margin-speak/criminalising-peoples-protests.html

SEE ALSO:

• Where Exposing Corruption Can Kill You – By Prakhar Jain (Mar 28, 2013, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/where-exposing-corruption-can-kill-you/

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Katju’s Cure – Editorial (Apr 6, 2013, Economic & Political Weekly)

Ever since he took over the chairmanship of the Press Council of India in October 2011, justice Markandey Katju has been in the news – not so much for reviving the virtually defunct Press Council but for airing his views on a range of subjects from politics to foreign policy to the media. He was applauded for his intervention on the paid news phenomenon leading to an investigation that exposed the extent to which major media houses willingly sold editorial space to politicians. Yet he was criticised for his off-the-cuff and generalised remarks on the state of the media. The latest in his diatribe against the media is his suggestion that minimum qualifications be made mandatory for journalists just as they are for doctors and lawyers.

In principle, there is nothing wrong in this suggestion. In fact, the majority of mainstream media houses do insist on minimum qualifications, usually a university degree, and in some cases also a diploma in journalism. While some smaller newspapers might not insist on degrees and do recruit people without them, this is not the norm. Also, many Indian language papers with district editions have enlisted stringers who are not trained journalists. But their inputs are processed by professionals. The advantage of having such stringers has become evident in the expansion of news coverage to areas that remained outside the purview of most media.

And then there are several small community newspapers and radio stations that have come up in the last decade serving the needs of their immediate community or region. These rural journalists, many of them women with only basic literacy skills, have learned how to report, interview and edit. If justice Katju’s recommendation of minimum qualifications were to be applied, none of this vibrant community media would exist.

There are several aspects of justice Katju’s recommendation that are problematic. For one, he is conflating the problem of a drop in standards in the media with the absence of educational qualifications in journalists. A major reason for fall in standards is the state of our institutes of higher education. Where once a basic university degree was considered an achievement, today it is barely enough for entry-level jobs. Every profession is faced with the poor quality of learning in those who are products of the majority of our educational institutions. Merely raising the bar on minimum qualifications for any profession is no guarantee that the people recruited will be better equipped for the job.

What is also forgotten is the absence today of mentoring or on-the-job training within media houses to the extent it prevailed in the past. This is important because apart from some basic book knowledge, journalism is a skill that can best be learned on the job. Today, in the highly competitive environment that prevails, this kind of training is largely absent in most media houses. As a result, journalists with paper degrees but without the necessary skill sets are expected to jump into the deep without knowing how to swim. …

http://www.epw.in/editorials/katjus-cure.html

SEE ALSO:

• Justice Big Mouth – By Rahul Kotiyal, Ajachi Chakrabarti (Mar 28, 2013, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/justice-big-mouth/
• Link By Link, A Chain For Watchdogs – By Anuradha Raman (Apr 8, 2013, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?284676

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